Gratitude 9/5/07

Some things I am grateful for today:

1) A good hard rain this afternoon. Looks like the monsoon isn't quite done with Tucson.

2) A good workout -- again.

3) One of my clients was in the paper today (not for anything having to do with me, but for his work as a mentor to young pilots):

Flying eases First Magnus pain

Ex-exec uses flight skills to mentor pilots

By Jeff Commings

Arizona Daily Star

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.05.2007

Since losing his job as senior vice president at First Magnus Financial Corp., Faisal Adil can often be found in a hangar with his small plane at Tucson International Airport, sometimes taking to the skies as a way to alleviate the stress of being unemployed.

"I've been out there every day," said Adil, one of the company's first 12 employees. "It's a good stress-reliever."

Adil, 37, has been a pilot since 1999. He's flown his Beechcraft Bonanza S-35 as far as the East Coast and across the border to Mexico.

His interest in aviation has segued into a stint as a mentor for future pilots in Tucson, an endeavor that recently earned him a $1,000 prize from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association as part of its Project Pilot program.

The award recognized his work with five people in the past year who have received their pilot's licenses or will get them soon. Two of those pilots are his father and his wife. The other three were former co-workers at First Magnus.

"He was a resource when I had questions," said one of Adil's students, Phil Shoemaker, who earned his pilot's license Aug. 25.

It was Adil's father, Junaid, who helped foster his interest in planes as a youngster in Dubai, where Faisal lived until he went to the University of Texas-Austin to earn a degree in business in 1987.

"There was a small airport, and planes flew really close to the ground," Faisal Adil said. "I remember lying in the sand dunes with my father and watching these jets coming overhead. I must have been 4 or 5 years old."

Becoming a pilot is not as easy in Dubai as it is in the United States, Adil said, so he put away his dream and earned bachelor's and master's degrees before coming to Tucson in 1995.

In 1999, he got his pilot's license and he's logged about 1,500 hours since then. It wasn't until 2006 that he became a mentor to his first pilot-to-be: his father.

"He's always wanted to go up and fly," Adil said of his father, who earned his license in April and was flying over Tucson as his son spoke of him last week. "He bought an airplane and I signed up to be his mentor."

Adil has been a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which advocates for pilots' rights, since he got his license, and registered as a mentor in its Project Pilot program. Potential pilots are connected with licensed pilots for guidance outside the lessons they learn from their official instructors, Adil said. The program started in 1994 and was revamped in 2006 with updated resources.

The program's Web site lists nearly 20 pilot mentors in Southern Arizona.

Adil said his work as a pilot mentor is "unstructured." There are no set meeting times, study sessions or flying requirements. But the meetings he has with his students — which can include a quick plane flight or discussions about an upcoming test — remind Adil of his time learning about aviation.

"It's nice to see people that you are working with grasp concepts for the first time," he said. "It's brand-new for me again."

Shoemaker, 28, said Adil's most important contributions have been getting him acquainted with real-world applications, such as knowing the inner workings of hangars and how to shop for a private airplane.

"That's where he helped a lot," said Shoemaker, who has been flying in his Piper Archer more regularly since First Magnus dissolved.

Though Adil enjoys sharing his expertise as a mentor, it's not a moneymaker. He's exploring options in aviation as a second career. He owns a plot of land near the airport and is thinking of starting a business that caters to private pilots.

"I don't mind hanging out at the airport," he said. "I've come to know all the people there very well."

What are you grateful for today?

Tags: gratitude, flying, monsoons